How would you feel if you bought an entire boat show, but nobody seemed to notice?
“We closed in February and made the decision, which might not have been the smartest thing, to do the announcement during the Miami International Boat Show. I think it just got lost in the shuffle,” says Andrew Doole, president of U.S. boat shows for South Florida Ventures. “A lot of industry people are completely unaware that Newport has joined the Informa family.”
South Florida Ventures is a Fort Lauderdale-based division of Informa that handles boat, art and beauty shows nationwide. Indeed, in a February press release, it announced that it had purchased the Newport International Boat Show in Rhode Island from the former owner and producer, Newport Restaurant Group.
The acquisition added to the roster of boat shows that South Florida Ventures owns or produces, including the annual events in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, St. Petersburg and Sarasota (known as the Suncoast show). The Newport show is the first Northeast addition to the portfolio.
INFORMASouth Florida Ventures is still looking to add more shows to its list, Doole says. “We don’t want to buy as many shows as possible. We want to be selective,” he told Soundings Trade Only in late June. “We picked Newport because it’s a great show and a great market. We think there’s room to physically grow the show. I think it will be the premier show in the Northeast.”
How the Newport Show Will Grow
The Newport International Boat Show has been held for more than 50 years. As of last year, it occupied more than 13 acres with more than 600 exhibitors and the largest in-water display in New England. This year, the show is scheduled to take place Sept. 12-15. Doole says plans to grow the Newport event include adding elements similar to what attendees experience at the Palm Beach show every March in Florida.
Those new offerings will include a Windward VIP Lounge Experience with a premium open bar, gourmet food, private restrooms, and indoor and outdoor relaxation spaces for showgoers who are 18 or older to get away from the crowds. One-day tickets for the lounge are $275 apiece, with a special rate of $225 available through July 15 in limited quantities.
Also coming to the Newport show, Doole says, are brokerage and charter yachts on display, including larger ones from the megayacht sector. While New England is not known for attracting the same quantity or size of superyachts that dominate the Mediterranean region each summer or South Florida and the Caribbean during the winter, there are plenty of larger yachts in New England each summer (say, starting around 125 feet) to increase participation at the show in September, he says.
“We’ll grow the size of the boats and the number of boats in the show,” Doole says. “With Informa’s support, we can add more equipment to the show. We’ve already sent up an additional 1,200 feet of floating docks, and we’re working with the local marinas to increase the footprint on the water. We also increased the footprint on land a little bit.”
That’s the plan — at least for now — he adds. As the size of the displays and other elements of the show grow, so will the overall vision. “If we need to buy more docks or build more docks, we’ll do that, too,” Doole says. “We’re constantly looking to help improve the show.”
Also new this year at Newport will be a third-party company overseeing internet accessibility. In the past, Doole says, everyone trying to get online at the same time has been a problem that could frustrate attendees and exhibitors alike. Outsourcing that infrastructure component to a company with larger-event experience is expected to resolve the connectivity issues.
“It does large events like Burning Man and large concerts,” he says. “We hope to have a much-improved internet so everybody’s phone will work, so everybody can do selfies and download pictures.”
Lisa Knowles will remain as the Newport show’s director. It’s a role she has had since January 2022, following several decades as the show’s sales manager. “Everybody from the team has stayed since the acquisition,” Doole says. “It’s a great team up here in Newport.”
Also remaining in place is the Newport for New Products Awards Program, which opened for entries in mid-May. That competition is open to domestic and foreign boats and products that launched after April 1, 2024, and that will make their official debut at the show in September.
And the Newport show will partner this year with the Rhode Island Marine Trade Association to support workforce development at area high schools. About 100 students are enrolled in these marine technology programs, which offer instruction in boatbuilding, composites and systems. The show will contribute $1,000 toward the programs’ career awareness goals and offer students discounted admission.
The elements of the show that are changing, Doole says, are intended to expand the show in keeping with other South Florida Ventures events, not to alter it in unfamiliar ways. The idea is to make the Newport show more attractive for boat buyers from New York, Connecticut and around the region, including people who keep seasonal homes in New England and Florida alike.
“They’ll make a trip out of it as they do with Palm Beach and the other shows down South,” Doole says. “It will become a destination show.”
Around the Show Scene
South Florida Ventures plans to do joint marketing going forward for all the boat shows in its portfolio, which will now use the same ticketing systems, as well. That way, showgoers will feel familiar with the way the shows are organized and operated, no matter which show they’re attending throughout the year.
Even so, Doole says, the Palm Beach and Newport shows are different from the larger shows held annually in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. When asked about recent grumbling from boat dealers and others in the industry about the significant cost of attending the Fort Lauderdale and Miami shows in particular, Doole said his team is trying to help find alternatives for exhibitors who are balking at the price of hotels.
“Maybe something over on the mainland in Miami instead of on the beach. Fort Lauderdale, I think we have a lot of choices on hotels, from five star on down,” he says. “Some exhibitors do tend to stay 30 minutes out. They won’t necessarily stay right next to the show or in the Bahia Mar area, because it is too expensive and the restaurants are hard to get into. They’ll stay out in Pompano or something like that for the cheaper hotel rate and restaurants that aren’t jammed.”
Overall, Doole adds, business has been good at those bigger shows, as well as at other boat shows so far this year, including events in St. Petersburg and Sarasota, Florida. “We’ve had good attendance and sales at all of those shows,” he says. “The exhibitor sales in Miami and Palm Beach were strong. We didn’t get any pushback.”
The overall economy is top of mind for consumers and dealers alike, he says. Interest rates, in particular, are a challenge for smaller-boat dealers to overcome at shows. (That same sentiment has appeared monthly in the Pulse Report survey that Soundings Trade Only puts out to boat dealers in cooperation with Baird Research and the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas.)
Even still, Doole says, interest-rate concerns have not stopped dealers from participating in boat shows — and he hasn’t seen much of a change on that front in the past few months as interest rates have remained largely unchanged. “Dealers and manufacturers are looking for the shows to be back,” he says. “The foot traffic isn’t what it was during Covid and right after Covid, but we haven’t seen anybody cutting back on space. We’re seeing boatbuilders looking for more space in Fort Lauderdale and Miami.”
Thinking ahead to this year’s Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, which is scheduled to run Oct. 30 through Nov. 3, two changes that have long been in the works should help to augment the experience for attendees and exhibitors alike, Doole says.
First is that Pier Sixty-Six is expected to fully reopen in time for the Fort Lauderdale show. That site, one of seven that comprise the show, serves as the location for the event’s Superyacht Village. Renovations at Pier Sixty-Six have been ongoing since 2021 under Tavistock Development Co. The marina has remained open the whole time, but the resort and its related offerings have been closed. “Pier Sixty-Six will be a game-changer with the amenities,” Doole says. “That will help with the Superyacht Village. It will really be a hub at that end of the show. It will be a real spot with restaurants.”
Also on track to be finished in time for this autumn’s Fort Lauderdale show is the renovated Las Olas Marina. It is being developed by Suntex Marinas and has been under reconstruction as part of a $130 million project by the City of Fort Lauderdale to improve amenities for the public all along the Las Olas corridor. Showgoers will have access to fine dining, boutiques and the pedestrian-friendly landscape at that show site, too.
Beyond those upgrades for 2024, Doole says, he’s also looking forward to the new hotel opening in 2025 at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center. According to Broward County officials, the convention center’s expansion and new hotel are expected to create more than 1,000 full- and part-time jobs, and to boost the local economy by more than $200 million annually, attracting more convention center and trade show business.
This article was originally published in the August 2024 issue.
